Re: [PATCH 3/6] PCI legacy I/O port free driver (take2) - Add device_flags into pci_device_id

[Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org>]

On Tue, 2006-02-21 at 13:10 -0800, Greg KH wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 21, 2006 at 09:59:51PM +0100, Andi Kleen wrote:
> > On Tuesday 21 February 2006 21:56, Greg KH wrote:
> > 
> > > I don't think you can add fields here, after the driver_data field.  It
> > > might mess up userspace tools a lot, as you are changing a userspace
> > > api.
> > 
> > User space should look at the ASCII files (modules.*), not the binary
> > As long as the code to generate these files still works it should be ok.
> 
> Does it?  Shouldn't the tools export this information too, if it really
> should belong in the pci_id structure?
> 
> So, is _every_ pci driver going to have to be modified to support this
> new field if they are supposed to work on this kind of hardware?  If so,
> that doesn't sound like a good idea.  Any way we can just set the bit in
> the pci arch specific code for the devices instead?

I think the right approach is to not change driver_data but instead to
add a new version of pci_enable_device() (I call it
pci_enable_resources() but you are welcome to find something more fancy)
to enable a selected set of resources with the old pci_enable_device()
just calling the new one with a full mask set.

I don't like the driver_data approach. I don't like the static table
approach in fact. Drivers may "know" wether they need to enable/disable
given resources based on other things like revision, etc... Some drivers
may want to enable only one BAR, access some registers to properly
figure out what rev of a device they are talking to, then selectively
enable other BARs and/or MSIs etc...

I think the driver should be in control... flags in a static table
aren't flexible enough.

Ben.